Joseph Gerth | Thankful for a full platter of Leftover Turkeys

Nov. 30, 2013

Sen. Mitch McConnell's campaign posted this picture on Facebook and Twitter of campaign manager Jesse Benton and McConnell. Benton said in a statement that he was '100 percent committed' to McConnell's re-election.

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Butterball announced that it was experiencing a national shortage of “large fresh turkeys” as Thanksgiving neared.

We, however, have not endured such a problem in Kentucky, where it appears we are experiencing one of our biggest, fattest crops of birds ever.

Welcome to the sixth annual Leftover Turkeys column, where we celebrate the miscues, misstatements and miscreants of the state’s political scene.

The only thing saving Barack Obama from a spot on our list this year is the fact that Gov. Steve Beshear has executed a near flawless rollout of Obamacare in Kentucky. While the national Obamacare website has crashed in spectacular fashion, Kentucky’s so far appears to be a success.

But there are plenty of other turkeys to sate all of our appetites.

Take, for instance, Jesse Benton, U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell’s campaign manager, who it seems has more fealty to the Rand Paul wing of the Republican Party than to his current boss. That makes sense, since Benton’s wife is Paul’s niece.

But what doesn’t make sense is when Benton was on the phone with a buddy of his, he called out his new boss as someone who didn’t deserve his support and said he was only doing it to help Paul run for president.

“Between you and me, I’m sort of holding my nose for two years, because what we’re doing here is going to be a big benefit for Rand in 2016,” according to the recorded conversation given to the blog EconomicPolicyJournal.com by former Ron Paul aide Dennis Fusaro. “That’s my long vision.”

Benton later apologized.

Next up is Alison Lundergan Grimes’ announcement that she would challenge McConnell in the 2014 election.

The announcement was held in July in an empty building owned by her father in Frankfort that had no air conditioner, making for a miserable experience for all involved.

She made her announcement in front of a banner she used when running successfully for secretary of state in 2011, giving all appearances that she was going to announce that she loved her job and would pass on challenging McConnell in order to seek re-election.

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It’s unclear if the campaign or a television cameraman placed a roll of toilet paper on the lectern to serve as a makeshift microphone holder, but it became the iconic image of a flawed rollout.

The fate of the uneaten gobbler also awaits Sen. Rand Paul, who, it turns out, has a problem with lifting others’ words to use in speeches and books without giving the real authors proper credit.

The story broke in October after he was caught lifting lines for a speech from Wikipedia, then lines for another speech from Wikipedia, and then from an online magazine and then passages from a book from conservative think tanks, etc. Most of the work uncovering the “Paulagiarism” was done by Buzzfeed.

Instead of apologizing and promising to fix the problem, Paul lashed out, calling those who reported his missteps “haters” and claiming it was simply a “footnoting” problem. Ultimately, he acknowledged he — or an unnamed person in his office — was in the wrong but never apologized for attacking those who reported his plagiarism.

Progress Kentucky was the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.

First it sent out arguably racist tweets that appeared to serve little purpose other than to point out that McConnell’s wife, former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, is of Chinese heritage. Then, its former spokesman and its executive director were found to be involved in recording — potentially illegally — a McConnell campaign meeting that laid out a case against actress Ashley Judd, who was considering a campaign against McConnell.

Curtis Morrison, the former spokesman, admitted making the recording. Shawn Reilly, the executive director, said through his lawyer that he was merely present. Progress Kentucky is now defunct, and the FBI is still trying to determine whether Morrison or Reilly broke a federal law.

But Progress Kentucky wasn’t the only group with Twitter problems.

Last month, a junior staffer at the National Republican Senatorial Committee tweeted out a picture with Grimes’ head superimposed on the body of Amber Lee Ettinger, who made racy videos as “Obama Girl.”

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Democrats immediately criticized the tweets as sexist and used it to portray the GOP as continuing a “war on women.”

An NRSC spokeswoman condemned the tweet as “extremely offensive” and said the junior staffer had been punished.

State Rep. John Arnold got the bum’s rush out of the General Assembly after three state workers accused him of sexual harassment — one claimed he grabbed her panties. Arnold ultimately resigned rather than fight what may have turned into an effort to expel him.

But what made the situation worse is how the Democratic House leaders, who learned of the allegations earlier in the year, and the Legislative Research Commission, which began investigating the claims at that time, handled it.

They never said anything, not to the Republican House members who sit on the LRC and not to the Republican and Democratic members of the body, giving rise to concerns there was an effort to sweep the whole issue under the rug.

The last turkey of the year goes to Louisville Metro Councilwoman Mary Woolridge, who allegedly refused to vote to oust colleague Barbara Shanklin simply because of race. Shanklin had been found guilty by the council of ethics violations.

Councilmen Kelly Downard and Jim King said that during deliberations, Woolridge said, “I will never vote to remove an African-American woman from this council. Period.”

Woolridge, who like Shanklin is black, didn’t deny saying that.

After a full weekend of gorging yourself on Leftover Turkeys, I hope you’ve had enough. I certainly have.

Joseph Gerth’s column appears every Sunday online and every other Sunday in print. He can be reached at (502) 582-4702 or at jgerth@courier-journal.com. His mailing address is 525 W. Broadway, P.O. Box 740031, Louisville, KY 40201-7431.